Helen is a Senior Research Associate at Norwich Business School. She is currently working on projects related to employee wellbeing.

She completed her PhD at Norwich Business School in 2017. Her doctoral research explored the influence of organisational values on value creation processes in social enterprises.

Prior to returning to academia, Helen held Research Associate and Researcher roles at The Research Centre, City College Norwich and The Guild, a specialist social enterprise consultancy.

Her book, "Inside Social Enterprise: Looking to the Future" co-authored with former colleague Nicky Stevenson, was published in February 2015.

Helen has a long-standing research interest in social value creation. The common thread that runs through all of her research to date has been the exploration of why, how, and how successfully, different organisations work to create positive social change.

Helen's doctoral research explored the influence of organisational values on value creation processes in social enterprises. Social enterprises are businesses that trade for a social purpose. By exploring the beliefs embedded in a diverse range of these types of organisation, Helen was able to highlight the variety of different outcomes that social enterprise practitioners and beneficiaries saw as ‘of value’. By providing evidence of this diversity of intentions and experiences, her research demonstrated how creating social value could not be seen as a simply ‘neutral’ or apolitical act. Her work also identified reasons why some of the social change intentions within social enterprises appeared to translate more directly into valued stakeholder experiences than others.

Helen has experience of both quantitative and qualitative methods. She has often employed mixed methods approaches to investigate complicated issues around holistic value and lived experiences within organisations - whether those experiences are beneficiary outcomes in social enterprises or perceptions of workplace wellbeing in business and public sector employees.